


Ghost In Me

by rednihilist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Dubious Consent, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Prostitution, Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-30
Updated: 2009-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2131587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednihilist/pseuds/rednihilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of marrying Dr. Helen Bryce, Lex calls off the wedding and stays in Smallville. Unfortunately, Clark still tries to destroy the ship in which he arrived on Earth, and Martha and Jonathan are still caught up in the blast. Now, with a runaway Clark and only guesses as to what the Kent family is hiding, Lex must track down his friend using only his own resources -- and perhaps some miniscule assistance from the newly formed 'Justice League.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: 'Smallville' and certain characters belong to Miller-Gough et. al. No profit is gained from this writing, only, hopefully, enjoyment.
> 
> AN: This story is incomplete and discontinued, but I still want it somewhere.

When he was little, Lex knew his mother was always sad. No matter how wide she smiled, or how loudly she laughed, he could tell she wasn't happy.

She cried too often and slept too much to fool him, even then.

His father said she just wanted another child, another son. He said Lex made her sad, made her cry and want to go to sleep so she could dream of a better little boy.

Years later, when Lex found out his mother was pregnant, he prayed for a baby sister. He promised God he'd go to Mass every single day, would get nothing but A's in all his classes, and be the best son ever if only his mother had a girl.

Perhaps that's why, when Julian was born, Lex felt guilty. He felt ashamed of himself, and when his mother still cried a lot, and still slept longer than anyone he'd ever known, Lex tried to make up for wishing his brother away. After all, it wasn't Julian's fault that he couldn't make their mother happy, either.

Dad had lied to him. Lex and Julian's mother hadn't wished for another son.

She'd wished for a different husband.

(When she died, Lex sat beside his father for the funeral, and that was the only time he saw him for the next three months. His mother's companion, her nurse, friend, confidante, and Lex's second mother, Pamela, left two days before the funeral and one after her death.

When she died, Lex was left alone. He'd never had any friends who weren't forced to play with him, whose parents weren't connected to his own.

When she died. . . Lex, years later, would look back and realize that was the end of his innocence.)

***

When he was little, Clark knew he was different. No matter how hard he tried, or how much he wanted to, he could tell he didn't fit in.

He spoke too little and stared too long. He forgot what he was saying in the middle of conversations and would accidentally start babbling incoherently. He made his mother cry, and his father look sad.

Years later, when he found out what he was, Clark felt relieved. It explained everything he'd always felt, and everything he had never been able to. He was still different, and his "difference" still made his parents sad and disappointed, but at least it wasn't his fault.

There was nothing he could do to change where he came from.

No matter how hard he wished.

(When he turned eight, his mother let him sleep over at Pete's for the first time. It was a Friday night, and Mrs. Ross had told them to "sleep tight, boys," before turning off the light and shutting the door. Pete's bedroom had had glow-in-the-dark stars stuck all around it, on the walls and ceiling.

When he turned eight, he went to sleep and woke up with his mom leaning over him and his eyes and throat sore from crying.

When he turned eight, he realized he wanted to study the stars from here rather than be an astronaut like he'd thought. . . because stars were perfect, but being too close to them made him want to cry for some reason.)


	2. One

It was easy, simple -- just. . . letting go, admitting defeat. He and Helen were never going to make it, and with a brief hug and kiss to the cheek it was done. Over. No more marriage, and no more wedding.

 

Lex waited a good hour before beginning the process of undoing everything the two of them had painstakingly built up for the next day. He cancelled all the arrangements for the honeymoon, called the caterer and priest and gave everyone a pointless explanation.

 

It took him another whole hour to summon up the guts needed to tell his father, but Lex did it. He hung up when the old man insisted on cackling in glee for minutes upon minutes, but it was done.

 

By ten o'clock that night, Lex had only one phone call left to make. And true to the popular saying, he'd left the best for last.

 

"Hello?"

 

Ah. Martha. Good.

 

"Hello, Mrs. Kent," he said in a quietly respectful voice. "I have some bad news, I'm afraid."

 

Now, he'd expected some polite worry at this point -- a sympathetic "Oh?" or even just a "What's wrong, Lex?" -- but instead all he got was a distracted, "Hmmm?" as if all her attention were on something more important.

 

Which meant Clark, and his sudden, mysterious migraine from Hell.

 

"Um, well, Helen and I have decided to call off the wedding." He waited a moment, and when no response was forthcoming, asked delicately, "Mrs. Kent, is everything all right over there? How's Clark doing?"

 

"Oh!" she exclaimed, her voice surprised and perhaps a little embarrassed. "Lex, honey, I'm so sorry to hear that! Is-- is there something wrong? You two aren't. . . breaking up, are you?"

 

Lex frowned, shifting the phone from one ear over to the other and sliding his now empty hand into his pocket. "We are, in fact, yes. It wasn't. . . working out between us, and we both agreed this was best."

 

"Oh, that's so sad," Mrs. Kent said, and there was the polite sympathy. Now all he had to do was steer the conversation away from him and more towards. . .

 

"Mrs. Kent, is Clark still feeling ill? You all left so quickly, I didn't have time to-- "

 

"Oh, no, he's fine!" she interrupted him with. "Soon as we pulled into the driveway, he was back to his usual self!" She paused for a moment, then said in a too-cheerful voice, "He's asleep at the moment, but I'll be sure to tell him you called!"

 

"Uh, yeah," Lex replied, at a loss as to what to say to make her stop lying to him, and so dreadfully badly, at that. "Yes, thank you. Feel free to pass on the message, you know. No need to keep anything quiet when half the state already knows, and the other half will read about it in the papers tomorrow."

 

"Yes, well. . . " and she hesitated again. "Lex, I am truly sorry this happened. You seemed so happy together, but-- " He heard her take in a deep breath over the line. "But if it didn't feel right, then breaking it off is probably for the best. A fresh start. For both of you."

 

She sounded genuine in her sentiments, but still distracted. Lex resolved to drop by that farm tomorrow. Early. He'd probably get a free pass, considering he'd just broken off his engagement and called off the wedding the night before. Best to take any advantages one could get with the Kent family.

 

"You're most likely right, Mrs. Kent," he said a little sadly. Also best not to sound too accepting of the situation. Wouldn't look good with the public, and Lex didn't want to be seen as coldhearted or emotionally distant. "Thank you. Tell Clark to stop by tomorrow, if he likes. God knows, I'll be here all day now."

 

"Of course," she said understandingly. "I'll tell him. You take care of yourself now, honey. Get some sleep and things'll look better in the morning light. You'll see."

 

Lex smiled at her concern. "I'm sure they will. Thank you again, Mrs. Kent. I'll talk to you later."

 

"Goodbye, Lex," she answered back, and he ended the call barely a second after she did.

 

The next day, there was an explosion at the Kent farm. Martha was in the hospital for weeks, and Jonathan sustained a severe concussion and a broken arm.

 

Lex didn't see Clark again for more than two years.

 

(The last thing Lex had expected to see when pulling up to the Kent farm was the red and blue flashing lights of police cars and emergency vehicles. He'd barely managed to shut his car off before he was out and running up the clogged lane.

 

"What happened?!" he shouted to the nearest uniform.

 

"I'm sorry, sir, you're not allowed here. This site is under investigation and, as such, all non-law enforcement personnel must remai-- "

 

"Where are they?" At the man's narrowing eyes, he said, "The Kents! The people who live here, for God's sake! Where are they? What the hell happened?"

 

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigatio-- "

 

Lex turned around and started walking back to his car. Dragging his phone from his pocket, he dialed the Smallville Medical Center and threw his weight around until they told him that, yes, both Martha and Jonathan Kent had been admitted there. And without further ado, he spun down the gravel road and sped towards the hospital, fully expecting to see Clark in the waiting room once he got there.

 

His expectation withered and died, though, when he practically ran inside the emergency room to find no sign of Clark anywhere. The admit nurse hadn't said anything about Clark being admitted, and Lex had just assumed that meant he'd been somewhere nearby, but not within range of the blast when it'd occurred. He'd been so sure Clark would be at the hospital, that he'd been the one to call in the explosion, maybe even to find them, but with no Clark in the waiting room, or with either of his parents, that meant something else entirely.

 

Lex was left with only a few explanations, and none of them were anywhere near as comforting as the idea of the distraught child standing watch at his parents' bedsides. One option, Clark was out of town and didn't yet know what had happened at the farm. It was unlikely. His friends were all there in the waiting room, Jonathan's and Martha's too, even. And the second, that Clark was still at the farm, and no one had found him yet. There had been an explosion. What if he'd been at ground zero?

 

Or another, Clark had been at the farm, same as his parents, and yet had, for some inexplicable reason, left. He'd left them there.

 

Out of the three, Lex hoped for the first. Something in him, though, kept coming back to the last. Chloe managed to corner him about an hour after he'd arrived, asking his opinion on what had transpired.

 

"It's not like him," she kept repeating. "He's. . . always there when bad things happen. Where is he," she asked him, her eyes red from tears and worry, "if he's not here?"

 

It was painful confirmation of what he already knew. Clark was always at the center of every dangerous and unexplainable situation in this town and the surrounding area. It'd been his family's home, their farm, that had exploded. He'd have been there.

 

He'd been there, and they'd have found him if he still were. No, Clark was gone, and until Lex could get in to see Martha or Jonathan, he'd just have to post a few lookouts.

 

Hopefully Clark wasn't too dissimilar from Lex in his method of running away. Beyond Metropolis, Lex's resources pretty much dried up.

 

Although he heard Gotham City was nice this time of year.)


	3. Two

(He ran into police trouble that second month. There were Missing Person fliers with his photo and description all over the place, and it became more and more ridiculous taking them down only to have them pop back up within a day or two. There weren't too many cops patrolling the neighborhoods he'd taken to wandering through, but enough that he started feeling twitchy about making eye contact or even raising his head.

 

He was guilt and shame personified, and he hated himself, but he didn't want to get caught. Putting the ring on, the one with the red Kryptonite, didn't really seem like a good idea either, but at least he'd know what to do to survive. He always knew what to do when he had that stuff on.

 

When he ran out of options finally, he spent the last of his money on a postcard that he hesitated over, but eventually mailed. Then, in an alley just a couple streets off from the main club drag, Clark slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew the chunky jewelry.

 

Clark put the ring on, but it was Kal who strutted out of that alley, and it was Kal who got to sleep in a bed that night -- someone else's, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

 

Two days later, Kal robbed a run of ATM's, and the day after that he leased an apartment in an upscale, modern, ultra-hip section of the city. He spent nights drifting among the night clubs in the area, and entertained himself during the day by stealing from bigger and better fish. He held up two banks, one in Midway City and the other in Gotham. He spread out the locations, so as to slip under the radar, yet he made the targets as big as he could within each city.

 

As a joke, he decided to try his hand at a bank closer to home. He put on his black ski-mask before rushing in, only to find the place already in the middle of a hold-up. By clowns.

 

The next morning, after another night spent out at the clubs, Kal woke up to the sound of automatic gunfire in his ear. He opened his eyes to three men, two with guns and the third armed only with a killer's eyes. Three guys, that was all. He felt insulted.

 

He grabbed one goon by the throat, but was already bored with this shit. He threw him across the room, destroying some of the stuff in the apartment in the process. It wasn't a big loss, though; the place had come already furnished and stocked. Not like he'd picked out anything in here, or had any attachment to it.

 

"That's quite a scar," the third one said, his mouth still smiling and his eyes still cold as arctic ice.

 

Kal turned away, moving to a dresser drawer and pulling on a t-shirt from within. "A gift from my father," he said truthfully, knocking shoulders with the guy as he went to sit down.

 

Morgan Edge, the guy with those cold fish eyes, propositioned him that morning. He offered Kal the venues to pull off his heists, and the coverage once the deals were done. No law enforcement would come near, not with Morgan Edge bribing and blackmailing left, right, and center.

 

And if he happened to turn a few tricks on the side too, well then, that was just a bonus. He enjoyed it. He was good at sex, rocked at it, in fact. Why shouldn't he get paid for something he was good at? It was fun, just as fun as tearing into some high rise, lifting those rich schmucks' shit and blowing out the side of the building, or walking back down, calm as you please, with a nice big grin for the cameras and fuck-all they could ever do about it.)

 

And if both modes of his employment were illegal in much of the so-called "civilized world," that didn't affect him. Not at all.

 

He was an alien. The rules didn't apply to him.

 

On his fourth day in the apartment complex, he decided to go swimming down in the large, central pool. People came and went, beautiful people, young people, some younger than him, but most older. But only one other person got in the pool while he was there.

 

If it weren't for the bikini, he'd have thought her a dude at first glance. As it was, the chick had no rack whatsoever, chin-length hair that kept falling in her face, hiding it, and was skinny as hell. But she had great legs and her ass, when he got a look at it, wasn't half bad, either.

 

He floated for awhile at the opposite end of the pool, surreptitiously watching her swim back and forth across the width of her end.

 

"My name's Jack," she called out at one point, but he just met her eyes blankly and eventually she went back to minding her own business. If he wanted to watch her, he would. If he'd wanted to hear her talk, he would've asked.

 

There was no point pretending, even to himself. He dropped his head back in the water, eyes on the summer sky. Was he really a "himself," he idly wondered, or should he say "itself?" Was he a he? Were there different sexes where he came from?

 

Maybe he was crazy.

 

Although, he knew he wasn't.

 

But wasn't that what a crazy person would think?

 

At one point, Jack got out of the pool, her killer legs crossing his vision upside-down from where he floated on his back in the water. The sun moved across the sky, eventually setting. Lights came on by the pool, and in various apartment windows around the complex. It became evening, and then night, but the water never changed temperature. At least not to him.

 

He didn't have another "appointment" until Saturday. Today had been Wednesday. He could lie in this pool for another two and a half days, and no one could stop him. He could skip the fucking, and if he really wanted, no one could ever stop him. He didn't have to stay here.

 

When the sun was about halfway up in the sky again, she came back. She was wearing a different swimsuit, one that covered more of her thighs, and with a t-shirt over the top that she kept on even in the water. When he looked closely, beneath the dark blue of the shirt, he saw bruises on her arms, across her stomach and back. She was wearing sunglasses, too. Her irises were brown, but one eye was black behind the shades.

 

"Jack" didn't swim as smoothly as she had yesterday, but he could tell she tried to pretend to. She also tried not to look his way, but, as he kept staring at her, he saw when she peeked.

 

Around two in the afternoon, she climbed clumsily from the pool and picked up her towel, slipped on her sandals, and started heading back to whichever apartment was hers.

 

"My name's Kal," he said as she passed right by him.

 

Stopping, she looked down at him with a frown.

 

"Pleased to meet you," she said, everything about her showing how false that was -- her tense posture, the thinness of her voice, the way she frowned at him with her whole face.

 

He smiled, grinned, showed all his teeth.

 

"You have yourself a sparkling evening," he bade her, closing his eyes finally.

 

Jack lived two floors below him, and one apartment over. Her fridge was full of fruit juice and vodka, and she had three different types of crackers in her cabinets.

 

When she came down to the pool the next day, at noon again, he waited till she'd gotten in, then climbed out, took four steps back. . .

 

. . . and ran back, jumping into the pool in a massive canon ball that splashed water up on top of even the lounge chairs and glass tables. Jack looked a mess, and her sunglasses were floating a foot away from her, but not even the dark black bruising surrounding her eye could dim the effect of her smile.


	4. Three

Things just weren't the same anymore. He'd stopped going to the Talon that often, in the hopes that Clark's friends' faces would leave his memory, but they never did. It was bad enough missing the kid without being forced to see how badly others missed him too. Lana was perpetually melancholy, Pete seemed to latch onto anger, and Chloe for some reason always met Lex's eyes with guilt. Throw in some acceptance, and Lex's own attempts to bargain with anyone for information on Clark, and you had all the stages of grief right there.

 

 

 

Of course, all four of them were nothing in their grief compared to the Kents. Martha, once the glue that held the community together, now rarely left the farm, and Jonathan. . .

 

 

 

Well, he and Lex had never gotten along, but it said something about how things might have changed when the man at one point actually broke down in tears in front of him.

 

 

 

They'd been about to lose the farm. Literally, someone was coming out the next day. Martha was the one who let it slip, and all Lex could think about was two people, two young people, surviving and scraping by on that farm for years, giving an orphaned boy a childhood and love and family. . . only to have it taken away soon after their son fled and their chance at another child vanished because of the same explosion. Martha and Jonathan were ghosts of themselves. How much pain could a person take before finally just lying down and calling it quits?

 

 

 

Lex refused to find out.

 

 

 

And so it was there, in that barn, up in that loft that still screamed 'Clark lives here,' that Lex yelled at Jonathan Kent and called him an insufferable, prideful idiot.

 

 

 

It wasn't until he'd reached the doors below that he heard the sobbing start. Lex stopped, of course, turning around and debating with himself for a good minute on whether or not he dared climb back up those stairs. Would Jonathan hate him for seeing his weakness?

 

 

 

Would Lex forgive himself for ignoring the man's pain. . . because of his own fear of rejection?

 

 

 

He made enough noise that the man would surely be able to hear him, but not so much that his tread came across as angry. Pausing at the banister, he saw Jonathan collapsed on the sofa, head in his hands and shoulders shaking. After a moment, he glanced up at Lex, shamefaced and awkward, but he didn't shout or turn to anger. It bumped him up a few notches in Lex's estimation. It took guts to cry, to let emotion out like that.

 

 

 

And Jonathan Kent might have been many things, but a coward wasn't one of them.

 

 

 

"He's never been gone this long," the man quietly said after a minute, his voice thick and breathless from crying.

 

 

 

Lex walked over to rest back against the desk, picking up a good-sized black stone resting on one of the shelves. Turning it over in his hands, he asked, "No summer camps or anything?"

 

 

 

Jonathan shook his head, looking out the barn loft doors to his right. "No. Martha and I, we thought. . . we couldn't stand having him gone that long." He hesitated and stumbled a bit, but Lex decided not to comment on it.

 

 

 

"You waited for a child so long, I would think it understandable if you were a little over-protective of him," Lex offered, his body tense and his eyes locked on the space rock.

 

 

 

"Yeah," Jonathan whispered, agreeing, "but he was ours from the moment we saw him."

 

 

 

They were silent for a minute or two, but gradually the awkwardness seemed to disappear. And when Lex finally looked up, Jonathan was looking back.

 

 

 

"You're gonna buy that deed anyway, aren't you?" he asked, and if Lex's eyes weren't mistaken, that was a miniscule smile curling the corner of the man's mouth.

 

 

 

Lex felt his own lips curve up slightly. "I already have," he replied, and Jonathan snorted in amusement. "You need this place, and when Clark comes back, he'll need his home, too."

 

 

 

The smile slid right off the man's face, but Lex knew it needed to be said. Something had convinced Clark that running away was his only option, and Lex didn't think it'd been solely because of whatever Chloe had apparently cussed him out for. She had power over him, but not that much.

 

 

 

No, only Martha and Jonathan would be able to do that kind of damage, and it wasn't difficult to put together which of them it had been, considering Martha had been unconscious for most of three days following the explosion and Jonathan Kent was known for his temper.

 

 

 

Jonathan swallowed heavily, dropping his head low again. He looked guilty, and suddenly Lex thought of something.

 

 

 

"For whatever you said, he'd forgive you. You know that, don't you?" Lex waited, but the man didn't move a muscle.

 

After another prolonged silence, Jonathan raised his eyes and briefly met Lex's across the room.

 

 

 

"It's not a matter of him forgiving me," he said, his head ducking away once more to look outside, where another bright spring day was already coming to a close. "It's that I said it in the first place, out loud. You can always lie to yourself when it's just in your head, just thoughts. But when you say it to someone else. . . that's when it's true.

 

 

 

"And I can never take it back."

 

 

 

(He felt guilty, but there was really no reason for it. All he'd ever done was be a friend to Clark.

 

The room was completely separate. He kept things, true, things perhaps better left alone or even destroyed, but that was his business, no one else's. It didn't affect anything outside the room, and certainly not his friendship with Clark.

 

He had the blanket the rescue crew had wrapped him in at the river, and photos of the wall paintings from the underground caves. Nixon's computer simulation of the crash on the bridge ran on a loop, and he'd enlarged that piece of paper Clark had inscribed with various symbols from the caves, the paper with the blanks left for relatives and family.

 

On pedestals he'd placed a chunk of meteor rock, a last surviving Nicodemus flower, and the extracted parasite from one Pete Ross. Strung up by his own hand was almost every mysteriously smashed bullet and casing he'd stumbled upon in Clark's wake.

 

He'd put photos of the Kents up, too, and there were of course several more of Clark than Martha or Jonathan, but those served as devices to trigger his thought process. They helped him to think; there was nothing wrong with that.

 

Truth was, he'd been ignoring it so long, it'd become habit, just another one he hated to admit to himself. He checked the locks on his door and windows before going to bed, he never went down alleys if he could avoid it, he always left his phone on in case he might be needed, and he never thought about how desperately he wanted to kiss Clark Kent. It became a game almost, a test of his will every time the kid was near, every time he smiled at Lex or jostled his shoulder or sat close to him and asked for advice. He never touched him like that. He was strong, physically, mentally, emotionally, no matter what his father said.

 

No matter what anyone said.

 

Daydreams weren't a luxury he could afford, and fantasies in the shower or before going to bed made him feel ridiculous. He hated feeling ridiculous. What happened in his dreams, though, while he was asleep and not in control of his mind. . . well, that was simply beyond his. . . . control.

 

Clark figured into his dreams a lot of the time, but more often than not it was just the lingering aftertaste of his presence, like the scent of cologne left over after someone's passed by. In Lex's dreams, there were usually many things going on, but the most important, the one Lex himself always seemed to be most focused on, was finding Clark.

 

It didn't take a genius to figure out what those dreams meant. He thought about the kid more often than he'd have liked, and refused to admit even to himself that the changes in the entertainment room or the atrium or the bedroom across from his had anything to do with what Clark might have liked. Lex liked blue and red. He liked many colors, not just purple, and looking at the same color scheme for three or four years rapidly became tiring. It'd been time for a change.

 

He tried to get out more, to the social parties and fundraisers to which he'd been invited. Bruce had actually looked surprised when Lex showed up at the annual Wayne Christmas party, and he'd never forget the look on his father's face when he saw Lex dancing with his date at the annual Metropolis Children's Center Fundraiser. Lex had waved at the old man, and damned if Lionel Luthor didn't forget himself and scowl in front of the mayor and his wife.

 

And with the rise of superheroes around the world, Lex's quest to find Clark was soon taken up by other like-minded souls. Bruce Wayne, out of nowhere, called Lex on his cellphone and asked him point-blank if he knew anything about a very strange series of international robberies. Lex had answered honestly, and fired back with a personal query of his own.

 

Bruce was Gotham's Batman. It just confirmed all of Lex's suspicions, and Bruce always had been. . . very odd. It made sense, in a truly unsettling, completely insane kind of way.

 

Lex kept all but the barest of facts on Clark hidden, and still the uber-vigilantes recognized one of their own. Lex explained to Bruce his theories about Clark being drugged, leaving out the part where he suspected the kid of doing it to himself, and soon Bruce told Diana Prince. Diana told everyone else in that League of theirs, and those people told their own contacts worldwide.

 

After a year, Lex had found it hard to believe that between all his searching and the clever eyes of a good dozen superheroes spanning the globe they'd yet to track down Clark. That was, until a partner of Bruce's in the ridiculously-titled Justice League stumbled upon an altercation in Tokyo, where someone who very closely resembled Clark's description was seen jumping out of a window on the 165th floor of a pharmaceutical company's headquarters. Afterward, said individual then "disappeared in a blur" down the streets of the city, where the superhero attempted to follow, but of course failed.

 

Sounded like Clark, if Clark were drugged out of his mind and bent on wreaking havoc on a grand scale. Who the hell knew what the kid had stolen, and Lex would bet his favorite car the kid wasn't working for himself. Clark was smart, but it was book smart, not street smart. Lana Lang probably knew more about the seedier side of life, and if that didn't say something about the purity of one farm boy, Lex didn't know what would. That Clark was apparently getting up close and personal now with other people's property spoke of a deeper level of dissociation than Lex had anticipated.

 

This was Clark Kent they were talking about, the kid who blushed over everything and honest to God shuffled his feet when he was nervous. Clark routinely said 'please' and 'thank you' and 'no, sir,' 'yes, ma'am' and everything in between. Once, he'd broken one of the vases full of flowers that decorated the mansion and, the next day, Lex had received a letter of apology complete with a batch of Martha's famous peanut butter marbled brownies. Needless to say, Lex had laughed with delight at the gesture. . . and then promptly devoured half the platter of treats with Clark kindly finishing off the rest.

 

The point was, Clark was the most genuine goody two-shoes Lex had ever encountered. Until the moment Bruce had given him the news about Tokyo, he'd still held onto the hope that somehow the kid was just. . . working at a restaurant or in a video store or as some kind of janitor -- whatever underage kids with brains did when they ran away.

 

 

 

Although Lex didn't know if he should consider corporate espionage better or worse than some of the other "occupations" he'd worried about Clark pursuing. It'd come with a heavier prison sentence, that was for sure, but then again what prison would ever be able to hold Clark?

 

 

Supposing he was ever caught, which after more than two years on the run, was looking like less and less of a possibility.)


	5. Four

He remembered climbing the stairs up to the room earlier that evening with. . . satisfaction. He'd been confident and sure of his place in the hierarchy.

 

 

 

Now, tied face-down to the bed, he mused at how quickly things could change. Mr. Keep-your-trap-shut! slapped him on the ass, and Kal obligingly moaned for him.

 

 

 

"I said keep your filthy trap shut, whore!" the guy shouted in his ear. Kal bit his lip to keep from smiling as the john went back to his wild thrusting. "You know what's. . . unh!. . . good for you," he panted, "you'll just lie there and take it. Whore. Dirty whore," he added, as though Kal might be under the mistaken impression there were any other kind.

 

 

 

A few more thrusts, and one more shout for him to shut his "goddamned, dirty-whore mouth!" and the guy finished with a yowl. He collapsed on top of Kal, and that was just about enough of that.

 

 

 

"Shift change, Johnny-boy," he told the guy. There was just enough slack in the rope across his shoulders for him manage to buck the dude off, and he did so happily.

 

 

 

"What the-- !"

 

 

 

"Get the fuck off me, you freak," Kal simpered, batting his eyes and licking his lips. Then, when the guy's face started turning red, he added, "Time's up, John. Get your shit and skedaddle."

 

 

 

" . . .name's not John. . . " the guy said confusedly.

 

 

 

"It is to me." He just looked at him, and soon Mr. Over-Compensating rushed off like a good little boy, gathering up his clothing and taking off in such a hurry, he even forgot to close the door to the apartment on his way out.

 

 

 

"Busy, busy," said a quiet voice a moment later from the bedroom doorway. Kal tried to turn his head, but the rope there was too tight for him to manage a good look in her direction.

 

 

 

"Get over here and untie me, bitch," he said, dropping his head back down to the mattress.

 

 

 

"Since you asked so nicely," she fired back, walking over and going to work on the knots.

 

 

 

After a couple minutes passed and Kal was still no closer to being untied, he fired off a rude, "Today, maybe?"

 

 

 

"Jesus, what's with these?" she exclaimed in response. "The knots are all backwards, and I can't even get my fingernails in there. . ."

 

 

 

"Lance is gone," Kal said, squirming on top of the bed, trying to ease some of the soreness from the worst of the rope burn.

 

 

 

"Like, gone gone?" Jack asked quietly. Her hands stopped scrabbling at the ropes for a few seconds, so Kal sighed.

 

 

 

"Yes," he answered tersely. "Fucking gone. Again. Now please, just untie the stupid things and get me the hell outta-- "

 

 

 

"I can't," she responded. "I already told you. They're all. . . all messed up, and they won't come apart."

 

 

 

"Fucking Christ on a goddamn pogo stick!" Kal shouted angrily. "Then go fucking get someone who isn't retarded and have them untie the mean ol' ropes-- "

 

 

 

"Stop being such a baby," she admonished him. "Yelling at me won't make it better."

 

 

 

Kal growled low in his throat, and shifted again slightly. The ropes were into his skin for sure now, and it was hard to stay calm when his fucking flesh was starting to burn!

 

 

 

"Go. Get. Someone!" he hissed out between his teeth. "Please."

 

 

 

Jack didn't move, though. She just leaned over the bed enough to meet his eyes.

 

 

 

"Who, Kal?" she asked him quietly. "If Lance is gone, who else is gonna help?"

 

 

 

"Goddamn it!" he screamed at full volume. Jack jumped off the bed, and Kal got a brief glimpse of her with hands to her ears.

 

 

 

When he'd quieted down again, a familiar, oh-so-smooth voice from the direction of the doorway asked, "Is there a problem here?" Then there were the sounds of someone coming closer, coming farther into the room.

 

 

 

Kal shut his mouth and his eyes, just listening to it all, as Jack backed away from the bed so someone else could take her place.

 

 

 

A hand lighted on Kal's back, and he felt it as Morgan bent down to whisper.

 

 

 

"So much racket for something you were begging me for not even a week ago," he mused, the exhalations of his words brushing and pushing against Kal's skin. "Where are those sweet nothings now, hmm?"

 

 

 

"I asked for more work, not to be tied up with. . . like this," Kal argued, trying to figure out if Jack were still in the room. He couldn't hear her, but sometimes with the Kryptonite so close all his senses diminished, not just the ones immediately affected.

 

 

 

"Ah, but what fun would it be if you could escape?" Morgan's hand slid lower down his back until it stopped on his left ass cheek. "Jacqueline, darling," he said suddenly, turning his head so his voice drifted over to where she must've been standing, "please excuse us."

 

 

 

He waited until she'd shut the door behind herself, then sat down next to Kal on the bed. Morgan's hands went back to sliding over Kal's body, seeming to take special interest in the parts directly under the green ropes. With each press of those rough hands, Kal shivered and twitched. It was like fire rushing through his skin, and Morgan had to have known it.

 

 

 

"So you like my gift, I take it?"

 

 

 

Kal realized he was panting, and swallowed thickly just as that left hand circled around to the front of his body. "Surprises are good," he breathed out.

 

 

 

Morgan gave a low chuckle in his ear, his body now draped almost entirely over Kal's and the push of air from his laughter tickling him deliciously.

 

 

 

"Then you're gonna love the job I have for you," he promised.

 

 

 

(He'd done a couple jobs east before and two overseas, one in Tokyo and another in Moscow, but never anything out on the west coast. In fact, the farthest west he'd ever been before this was Denver and Boulder, and that'd been for a school fieldtrip when he was 11.

 

Star City was a big place, but no bigger than Metropolis or Gotham, and a hell of a lot smaller than Tokyo or Moscow. It smelled different, though, and the people seemed. . . lighter somehow, as if their problems didn't weigh them down so much.

 

Clark took a flight out in the jet of one of Morgan's "associates." There were two stewardesses, and an endless supply of anything he might have wanted. Anything Kal might have wanted.

 

He sat by the aisle and kept the blind pulled over the window the entire trip. He forced a smile for the gorgeous women trying to fawn over him and kept repeating to himself that everything happening now, the whole situation and all the pain, was his own goddamn fault.

 

He'd rather serve in Hell than face his parents. He'd sold his soul for the assurance that he'd never have to look Martha or Jonathan in the eye ever again. And it was assured. They'd never stand the sight of him now, not after everything he'd done.

 

It took about three and a half hours to reach the city. He was to wait in a hotel room until three in the morning. "Entertain yourself," Morgan had told him. "You deserve it." The job would be easy, in and out and no one the wiser, save Morgan's client. It was the waiting Clark hated. Time alone meant time to think.

 

So as the jet descended, Clark decided he'd waited long enough. He pulled the ring out of his pocket.

 

It was Kal who disembarked in Star City a little after nine that night. It was Kal who grinned at the brunette stewardess and made her blush when he scanned down her body.

 

It was Kal who went to a dance club and over the course of the night took three different people up against a wall. One had the bluest eyes he'd ever seen, and the second danced like she had no bones in her body. The third one he was actually tempted to bring back to the room, but Morgan only bent so far. Kal had learned the hard way not to flaunt his defiance and even coming to the club had been against the man's orders, never mind returning to the hotel with someone.

 

But for a voice like sharp silk, and skin unfashionably pale, Kal considered it. "Where do you live?" was whispered into his mouth.

 

"Not here. I'm just visiting," Kal answered, pushing away with a last lingering caress down that white, smooth back.

 

"Shame," was the reply, teeth flashing in a wicked smile. "The things I'd do to you. . . "

 

Kal pulled the condom off, flinging it down the alley, and then tucking and zipping himself back up.

 

"Well, you know what the song says. 'You can't always get what you want. . . '"

 

The man turned around, meeting Kal's eyes with something like doubt.

 

"And did 'you get what you need?'" he asked, raising an eyebrow challengingly.

 

Kal made his face impassive and kissed the guy right over the bite mark he'd left on his neck. "Close enough," he admitted. Then he turned around and walked out the other side of the alley. It was after two in the morning.

 

Close enough.)


	6. Five

When he woke up, it was to Mercy shoving his cell phone right into his face and dried drool flaking off his chin. The woman he'd brought back last night was gone, and any lingering effects of the buzz he'd been working on had no doubt dissipated around the same time.

Still, Mercy's usual pissed-off expression, and Bruce's spine-chillingly cheerful voice drifting out from the receiver were not what Lex looked forward to first thing in the. . . early afternoon, he found out after a quick glance at the clock on the bedside.

"What is it?" he rasped into the phone, returning Mercy's glower with one of his own.

Never one to mince words, when he wasn't playing the quintessential playboy that is, Bruce spared him the greeting and quip and simply said, "I've got something on your boy."

"My 'boy?'"

"Kent," Bruce clarified, and Lex's heart stuttered in his chest. "He's popped up again, this time in one of Queen's labs." Bruce paused, letting the information sink in, while Lex reeled from both the fact Clark had finally been spotted again, and that it had been at one of Oliver Queen's holdings.

Would it have been too much to ask for the kid to have robbed Wayne Enterprises? Or LeXcorp? Then Lex had the terrifying thought that it very well could have been his father's company under "attack," and a good deal of his irritation evaporated. He'd much rather deal with Oliver Queen, certified bully and prick extraordinaire, than Lionel any day.

"When did this happen?" Lex asked, rubbing a hand over his face then waving for Mercy to leave the room. She sneered at him, but he ignored her in favor of trying to decipher the meanings behind Bruce's many and varied sighs.

"Two weeks ago," Bruce answered.

"Shit," he cursed, falling back on the bed. "He could be anywhere by now. Two weeks?! I thought you and Queen were on the same team," he accused.

Another sigh, although this one sounded almost amused, then Bruce responded, "We are, but one doesn't parade about one's security breaches. He knew what we were looking for, but, Lex, his company is just as big as yours or mine. It's beyond ridiculous to assume he would always know everything about every single site under contract. That's what managers are for, after all."

"So break-ins like this are so routine the CEO isn't even made aware anymore?" Lex scoffed. "I don't care what the prick told you. Any other time, if he were too busy with his vigilantism to run his company efficiently that would mean only good things. But this time. . . he knew, absolutely knew who and what we were looking for, and still he neglected to put out any alerts or warnings. He's an imbecile, Bruce, and a malicious one at that. This so-called "lead" or "break" is just about worthless now, thanks to The Green Ditherer."

"Oh, it's not a total loss," Bruce said, and that was definite amusement in that voice.

"And why is that?"

"Because this time your boy moved slowly enough to be picked up by the security cameras."

(He let Bruce make the arrangements, gladly. The less he had to do with Queen, the better. Just because the dick was a member of Bruce's superheroes country club didn't mean he was a nice guy, by anyone's standards.

When the pretty secretary stood up to open the door for them, Lex gave in to his nerves and quickly cracked his neck before striding into Queen's office. Oliver was seated behind his desk, but stood and came around when Lex and Bruce were shown in. He thanked "Brenda" kindly, then leaned back against the desk and gestured for them to have a seat. Bruce nodded, but remained on his feet. Lex just stopped walking and commenced waiting for the pompous ass to get around to sharing the footage sometime in the next year.

"Trip okay?" Queen asked, and Lex couldn't contain his irritation at the inanity.

"Stupendous," he answered sarcastically with a childish roll of his eyes. Oliver frowned, but Lex just waved his hand in a 'come on' gesture. "So," he asked, rudely, "where's the footage from the break-in?"

Queen raised his eyebrows, glancing at Bruce before shrugging and pushing off his desk. He walked over to the left side of the room, hitting a button which caused a few wood panels to open, slowly revealing a built-in entertainment center. Then, picking up a remote, he stepped back and turned on the screen. Immediately, four squares of film appeared. From what Lex could tell, it was security footage. The cameras changed every 30 seconds, but the four in which Lex was most interested were the two entrances to the building -- the front proper and the service, presumably -- the corner view of two connecting hallways on the top floor, and the elevators.

They watched for about two minutes, no one saying anything, when suddenly Queen leaned forward a little.

"Okay," he said, "coming up in the top left, right about. . . there."

Lex caught it, but barely. There was a flash of movement, there and then gone again in an instant. It could have easily been brushed off as a glitch in the security or cameras, were it not for the time stamp running merrily along in the corner. It'd been too quick to be a system malfunction, and too localized on the screen. The whole of the camera hadn't gone dark or turned to static, just the one section that flickered and smeared in a direct path towards the elevators.

"And then here's the money shot," Queen said. "Bottom left, then bottom right when that switches views."

Lex held his breath, staring unblinkingly at the bottom left panel until it finally switched over to a new camera. It was one of the elevators.

And inside that elevator was one Clark Kent.

Lex knew right away it was him, and blew out the air he'd been holding in his lungs. But then, as the camera kept rolling, he began to doubt. . . ever so slightly. First, the posture was wrong. Clark would never lean against a wall like that, all spread out and aggressive. Second, the clothes weren't right. The figure on screen was tall, and dark, and the shape of the body was the same, but nothing else was.

Lex was beginning to think this was all a mistake, all a complete waste of time.

"Now the right," Oliver said, and Lex dutifully looked at the bottom right square as the view switched. It was a hallway, white and sterile, and Lex figured it must be just outside the laboratories. Elevator doors opened on the screen, and out strutted the dark-haired man. From the angle of the view, the camera in that hallway must have been mounted right up next to the ceiling. And so, it wasn't until the man came closer that they finally got a good look at his face. He'd kept it lowered in the elevator, and if that blur through the lobby had been the same person. . . then. . .

It was a quick look up at the camera, just a glance really, but everything Lex had been telling himself up to that point abruptly held up its hands and conceded defeat.

That was Clark's face, which meant that was Clark walking down that hallway like he owned it. That was Clark Kent smirking at the camera in a way Lex had only seen twice the whole time he'd known the kid.

That was Clark Kent's fist punching a hole into the security identification keypad, and that was Clark waltzing right into a protected lab.

When the cameras switched again, Oliver got up and merely pointed at the bottom left again. Sure enough, a few seconds in, another prolonged blur moved across the front lobby again, this time in the opposite direction.

Then, with a click, Queen turned off the screen, and both he and Bruce turned to look at Lex.

"Find what you were looking for?" Queen asked, and his voice held nothing but curiosity. Any other time, Lex would have found that the strangest thing, Oliver Queen speaking to him civilly.

But that had been Clark. . . and it hadn't. The boy he'd known, the naïve geek raised on his parents' farm, never would have been able to do what this Clark had done. The person, the thing that'd been caught on Oliver's security cameras, was something else entirely.

"I'm really not sure," he finally answered.)


	7. Six

The job was a success, and once back in the city his car took him straight to one of Morgan's clubs. Atlantis, it was called, and after three years in operation it still drew a huge crowd nearly every night. The summers were even crazier and so, it being August, pretty much everyone on the dance floor was already drugged up, trashed, or some combination thereof.

He'd been dropped off here for Morgan, and the client by extension, so Kal didn't waste any time climbing up to the offices. He passed security without even a second glance, and found Morgan's personal assistant waiting for him outside the door.

"Meet any snags?" Henry asked.

"None," Kal replied. "Easy as pie."

"He'll be glad to hear it." Kal sent a questioning look at the man's unusual tone, and Henry sighed. Drawing out a cigarette from his fancy case, he lit up then exhaled smoke and the words, "They found Lance again."

Kal couldn't help his expression, and Henry rolled his eyes at the look of stupid surprise that was surely on his face.

"Yeah," the man agreed, taking deep pulls of his cigarette and then breathing out heavily through his nose. Kal thought it made him look remarkably like a dragon. "I thought the little shit had finally managed to stay under the radar, but," and he shrugged, "guess not. Never was the brightest," he added, studying the cherry before deciding to take another couple drags and ashing it in a nearby potted plant.

"Is that who's in there now?" Kal asked.

Henry nodded, still too wrapped up in his cigarette. Kal put on a show of being put out, sighing and slouching over to a sofa up against the wall. Henry paid him no attention, which left him with the perfect opportunity to eavesdrop like only he could.

He 'looked' through the wall into Morgan's office, catching four skeletons before he effectively separated and rearranged the layers to see the complete picture. Morgan was behind his desk, silver paperweight in his hand, and one of his enforcers stood on either side of a horribly disheveled Lance.

" . . .the amount of time I spent," Morgan was saying. He shook his head mock-sadly, then got up and walked around to stand in front of Lance. With his hand, he lifted up Lance's head, forcing eye contact -- his favorite way to intimidate.

"You do this, and yet you always fuck it up in the end. I am fast approaching a lack of interest in you and your antics." When Lance tried to pull his head away, Morgan just clenched tighter and shook him a little, his voice going deathly cold and cruel.

"I used to tell you to come to me if something were wrong, if I could fix or do anything for you. Well, that offer has expired. You do your job. You do what and whom I tell you, and you stay put. Anything else, and we'll have ourselves a real get-to-know-you." He jerked his head in a gesture towards his collector's cabinet of weapons, and Kal saw the blood leave Lance's dirt-caked and bruised face.

Kal chose that moment to stand up and, despite Henry's outrage, knock on the door. He 'watched' as everyone looked in his direction, and smiled when Morgan did. He knew who was waiting, and he'd love the opportunity to rub salt in the wounds.

"Come in, Kal!" Morgan called out cheerfully.

He pushed the door open and stalked over, looking only at Morgan despite the pleading weight of Lance's gaze. Stopping a few inches in front of the man, Kal smirked and brought up his hand, fist closed. Morgan raised an eyebrow, but obligingly held out his own hand, palm up beneath Kal's.

"And did you bring me something special?" Morgan asked quietly.

Kal leaned in closer, his lips brushing up against the man's ear. "Depends," he said. He held his hand still, right above Morgan's, but not opening. "Did you?" Drawing back to meet his eyes, Kal pointedly flicked his over to Lance and back.

"Hmmm," Morgan mused, a wicked smile curving his lips. Then, putting on a fake thoughtful expression, he said, "I don't know, my boy. He might be too much even for you." His other hand came up to Kal's cheek, and after a caress Kal dropped the prize right into Morgan's palm.

He stepped back and declared, "I want him, and you don't. Give him over to me, and we'll call it even."

"Even?" Morgan laughed. "For what?"

"For leading me on a wild goose chase." He raised an eyebrow, then waited while Morgan summarily dismissed the henchmen and went back to his desk. After the doors had been firmly shut, Kal walked over to the desk and sat down near where Morgan was. "It was a sham, that job," he said, and Morgan just smirked up at him. "You lying shark."

"Come now," he replied. "No security guards or alarms? What did you think was going on?"

"I thought," Kal stressed, "that I was pulling a heist. My mistake that I assumed you valued me more than that."

"Oh, but I do." He ran a hand up Kal's leg, stopping just short of his crotch, and Kal unconsciously tensed with Lance still in the room. He took care of Morgan, and sometimes it wasn't half bad, but he'd never liked an audience and Lance wasn't exactly some stranger whose opinion he could easily brush off. "I value you and your. . . abilities very highly. You're a blessing to me." He cast his eyes over to Lance again. "And if I can make it more worth your while, then. . . "

Morgan gave Kal's leg a last squeeze before leaning back in his chair and gesturing towards Lance with a wave.

"He's all yours. Take him, fuck him, play videogames with him for all I care." Kal got up slowly, maintaining eye contact and, sure enough, Morgan leaned forward quick as snake and grabbed his hand before he could get any farther. "You keep him, though," he warned. "None of that beneficent ruler garbage you're prone to. He's not with me, he's with you. Or he's simply. . . not."

Kal nodded his acceptance of the deal, disentangling his hand with a twist and fully standing up in front of Morgan's chair. "Next time had better not be a total waste of my time then." 

"Right," Morgan said, looking down at his desk and the small rectangular box sitting on it. "Well. Take your boy and go and relax. I've got another job set up in two days, overseas."

Kal made a face and stopped walking abruptly. "Please don't tell me it's who I think it is."

Morgan grinned, and Kal groaned.

"You do such wonderful work together," Morgan said, amused. "I don't see why you despise her so much."

"She's a backstabbing bitch," Kal told him bluntly, "and a prima donna. Can't you get someone else to-- ?"

"No," Morgan interrupted, "believe it or not, everyone else also has a job to do. Bela has important information at a reasonable price-- "

"You mean at a place with low-tech security," Kal interjected.

"Just so." He kept right on smiling, and eventually Kal sighed and grabbed Lance's arm, pulling him towards the doors. "Tuesday," Morgan called out, when Kal went to turn the door handle.

He nodded back, then opened the door and dragged Lance out through the club.

(Kal and Lance and Jack all worked for Morgan, and they all lived in the same apartment complex. There were two or three other girls of Morgan's scattered around there also, but Kal couldn't stand them and Jack had a problem with other women. It'd been Kal and Jack for about four months, and then Lance had moved in.

They'd paired up a few times on jobs because Morgan liked how they "compared and contrasted." Kal and Jack were both dark, although her skin was darker and her eyes as well, but Lance was a blonde surfer-type. His eyes almost matched Kal's, and he was a few inches shorter.

Jack had started out on rough trade, Morgan told him at one point, at her own insistence. Kal took those jobs over soon after he started turning tricks, though. He'd gotten a hold of some small pieces of green Kryptonite, and when used judiciously he bruised and bled just like anyone else. And once out of range, he healed up like magic. Jack had been furious and insulted at first, thinking he'd moved in on her territory and was trying to force her out.

She and Lance pulled in the high-class calls now. Jack took the straight men, and Lance took everything else.

Kal took the freaks, and he took Morgan. Or had Morgan take him. It was all the same really, in the end.

But Kal never made a move on either Jack or Lance, and they gave him the same courtesy back. Sex was supposedly fun, but when you did it all the time as a business. . . well, it became pretty ridiculous and grotesque when you really looked at it. Lance liked cuddling, though, and Jack enjoyed having someone help her cook, so between the three of them they made a nice little fucked-up, pseudo-family. It was Lance who convinced Jack to grow her hair out and eat more, and it was Jack who sat up with Kal when his chest hurt and the nightmares and guilt just wouldn't go away.

When he'd first seen Lance, Kal had immediately pictured Chloe and Lana going berserk over some pretty boy in a magazine. They'd squealed and giggled and he and Pete had rolled their eyes and pretended not to be jealous. So if he'd been a little stand-offish at first, well, Lance eventually forgave him.

"That's just Kal," he remembered Jack saying early on. "He's moody. Don't mind him when he snaps; his bark's a lot worse than his bite."

Jack was the oldest, now 20, but when Kal had met her she'd been barely legal. Lance was two months shy of 17, and he'd been a scrawny 14-year-old when he'd moved in -- 14, going on 40. He'd known more then than Kal did now about "the life," and no way did he ever really want to find out why that was.)


	8. Seven

(No one ever explicitly spelled it out, but he would have had to have been blind, deaf, dumb, and dead not to have picked up on all the little hints and whispers.

J'onn J'onzz was the first one to shake Lex's hand. Well, the first one to do so while in "uniform." Bruce had of course shaken his hand many times over the years. When he'd first met her, Diana too had gripped and shaken his hand so hard he'd immediately known she'd meant business. But J'onn was one of the few members who actually offered him goodwill. Lex wasn't about to ever forget that, or even become complacent with regard to the whole situation.

What it boiled down to was, he was only there because of Clark. It was obvious. Oh, everyone was civil enough about it, but they interrupted him when he spoke and brushed his offers of help aside almost, but not quite, dismissively. He was a consultant. He had no real "superpowers," no "uniform" in which to run around at night through the seedier parts of his chosen city. It was clear he was only useful for the inside information he could provide.

Clark was a threat, they'd collectively decided. Bruce/Batman embraced the theory that it was a case of blackmail and kidnapping, as did J'onn J'onzz/Martian Manhunter. Diana/Wonder Woman did not, and neither did Impulse, Green Arrow, Black Canary, nor Aquaman. Green Lantern remained on the metaphorical fence, refusing to pass judgment until, as he put it, Clark did "something irreparable to life on this planet."

After the break-in at one of Queen's facilities, the League supposedly spent nearly a day going over and over the footage, and then several hours "discussing" courses of action. All this had been related to Lex by Bruce, which meant they'd probably shouted at and insulted each other across that ridiculous conference table of theirs for an extended period of time, and Bruce was just being his usual taciturn, formal self and putting a nice gloss over the whole situation. Lex had been to the headquarters enough times to know just what a "meeting" really looked like.

Wonder Woman played devil's advocate to Batman, when in actuality she very rarely disagreed with him. Martian Manhunter seemed to have always already made up his mind before even entering the building, and along with Green Lantern merely attempted to point out any mistakes in logic for either side of an argument. Green Arrow. . .

Well, it was no secret amongst themselves who they were outside of the League, but even if it had been Lex would bet anything Oliver would be the first one identified. Green Arrow was pigheaded and abrasive and seemed bound and determined not to give an inch on anything, which is of course what Oliver Queen was famous for: his refusal to back down. There was a well-known story about how, on the eve of graduation from Excelsior Academy, Oliver Queen and three friends snuck out and BASE jumped off the top of the Luthorcorp building in Metropolis. On a dare. No one from whom Lex had heard the story knew exactly who had dared them, but everyone agreed it was just like Oliver to show it to them and prove them wrong. Some thought it just hype, or exaggeration, or even, one time at a party when practically everyone but Lex had been three sheets to the wind, a metaphor for the great Oliver Queen's determination to Overcome Death.

It was a true story. Lex knew because he'd been the one to make fun of Oliver's fear of heights, and to dare him to "jump off a cliff." Well, Luthorcorp was evidently a good enough cliff for Kansas, and Oliver Queen was still a smug son-of-a-bitch. He was just as irritating when 'himself' as he was all leathered up and armed to the teeth. Green Arrow was just like Oliver Queen. In other words, he was useless and petty and only complicated matters that would otherwise be quite simple.

But as much as Lex would have liked to have brought Ollie down a peg or two, his focus and everyone else's remained largely on Clark. Clark, or someone so Clark-like it was ridiculous, had just two days ago robbed the Metropolis Savings and Loan on West M and 100th. He'd done so without a mask or any kind of disguise, and Lex had no clue why the police or Feds or any number of law enforcement weren't on the case now. But they weren't. There was nothing going around about a suspect in various bank, pharmaceutical, and government thefts. Not even a whisper.

So, Bruce tapped a few of his contacts and Lex called in a few favors and six days after the robbery, Lex got an e-mail asking him if he wanted to go out on the town. With Bruce.

'Well,' he wrote back, 'it wouldn't be the first time, now would it?')

"Why here?" Lex shouted, straining to be heard over the roar of the club.

"You'll see," Bruce said right into his ear. There was a small smile adorning his lips, which Lex found more than a little unsettling.

It was a little after eleven on a Tuesday, so the revelry looked to be just getting under way. Whatever he and Bruce were waiting for, there were likely two or three hours left in which it could appear.

He'd once frequented dance clubs like this one. Everything was familiar and alien at the same time, and Lex found himself feeling simultaneously exhilarated and depressed. He and Bruce were easily the oldest people here, but no one seemed to pay them any mind. Once Bruce had finally deigned to tell him where they were going tonight, Lex had successfully managed to reassure Bruce they wouldn't be recognized.

No one here, he would wager, cared that Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor were in the building. Everyone was too busy getting high, drunk and fucked to notice two over-the-hill playboys lingering in a corner of the upper floor.

By the third hour there, Lex swore his brain was actually trying to compete with the club's bass line. The way his pulse beat behind his eyes in exact counterpoint to every single song's rhythm told him he'd been too long away from this scene to ever now come back again.

He was out of practice, and he didn't care. An old saying came to mind, just as Bruce tugged on his arm to get his attention.

"If it's too loud, you're too old," Lex mouthed to himself, just as Bruce's arm curled around his shoulder and the man turned them both to the right. Then, with a single finger, Bruce pointed down the line of Lex's shoulders and his own arm to where a small group of people had just entered.

At first, the flashing lights made it nearly impossible to differentiate anyone from anyone else, but once Lex consciously tried to compensate for it, he was able to spot them.

Two men and one woman slipped through and joined the crowd right in the center of the dance floor. The girl went in the middle, and the two men surrounded her, and all three danced in synch. It was lovely.

It took Lex nearly a minute of watching them to actually realize just who that dark-haired man was down there, and probably another two to really believe it.

Since when could Clark dance?

The music was of course of the clichéd trance genre, predominantly bass line with a woman's soprano delicately soaring over it. It was loud, extremely loud, but still Lex didn't dare speak to Bruce. For even over the aural barrage, someone might hear.

Whoever that was down there who looked and grinned and laughed like Clark Kent, but didn't move like him, act like him, or dance like him. . . whoever that was, he'd just held up a large city bank less than a week ago with nothing but his bare hands and a burlap sack. Whoever that was, he'd once jumped out of a window 165 floors off the ground, and had then moved away from said building faster than the eye could see.

Whoever that was, it wasn't just some Kansas farm boy on a very long bender. Lex, after this long chasing his friend, was very near the point of actually accepting to what the signs all pointed. He wasn't there quite yet, but give him another month and. . .

Clark was not a mutant. He was not like Diana or Bart, either. In fact, the person Lex looked to most often in those Justice League meetings wasn't who he'd have guessed when starting out. No, instead of seeking out Bruce's black-smudged and camouflaged eyes across the table, Lex found himself taking cues from J'onn J'onnz. The Martian Manhunter.

Lex was close. It was on the tip of his tongue, the edge of his consciousness, working itself inexorably, increasingly closer.

Lex cast a glance at Bruce's face next to him. The way he was studying the trio below, he wondered if Bruce hadn't already figured it out, too. It wouldn't surprise him. The argument that Bruce was at a disadvantage for lacking a so-called "superpower" was only valid if one didn't consider being a genius a super power. Lex did, but then perhaps he was biased.

"They make quite a sight, don't they?" Bruce yelled towards him. A few women stumbled past them along the upper floor, one steadying herself on Bruce's arm as she passed. When he looked over, Lex met his eyes and raised an eyebrow in the woman's direction.

Bruce's eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips, then turned back to the "sight" below. Lex didn't like the calculating gleam in the man's eye, but then. . .

Not even Lex quite knew what he was feeling, himself, so how could anyone possibly understand what Bruce Wayne was thinking or feeling? The man made Lionel look like the poster boy for emotional awareness. Compared to him, both Oliver and Lex were well-adjusted, straitlaced, hopeful young men.

Bruce didn't have layers so much as caverns, ones filled with secrets, bats, pain, and avoidance. Lex looked at Bruce, then down at what was left of Clark, and felt truly drained for the first time since the hunt had begun more than two years ago.

He turned on his heel abruptly and made for the stairs down to the lower level. He was quick enough and lucky enough to disappear within the crowd before Bruce could catch up to him. As he worked his way around the outskirts of the dance floor, trying to slip between constantly moving bodies, it was his intention to leave the club entirely. It didn't feel right, this confrontation Bruce had brought him here for.

He wanted Clark, not this dangerous, dark, wild creature.

It often seemed that the more one sought after something, the more elusive that something became. 'A watched pot never boils,' about summed it up, in Lex's mind. He'd been watching this pot for years, and now when he was finally so close. . . it just wasn't right.

But Fate, or destiny, or some higher power must have decided to turn on the heat full-blast all of a sudden. It was, truthfully, a helluva lot like disaster in slow motion. Lex heard someone shout his name -- Bruce, no doubt. He turned around, instinctively, to see what was going on.

And no sooner had his head whipped back towards the stairs than he felt his arms gripped tightly, like being encased in concrete.

"Hello, Lex," came a cheerful yell above him. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Yeah," he got out, lifting his head and at last, after so many dead-ends, meeting those eyes in person again. "You know how much I love the nightlife. . . Clark."

He laughed. He tilted his head back and full-out laughed, his hands still strangling Lex's arms and the heat from his body pushing out in waves. Bruce was somewhere back there, but the sheer size of Clark's body hid all but him to Lex's eyes. In that moment, there was Clark, and the bittersweet triumph Lex felt at standing here with him once more, and that was all.

"It's Kal now," Clark whispered into his ear. He hadn't leaned forward, not that Lex had seen, but. . . there he was, mouth right up next to Lex's ear and breath sticking to Lex's skin like hot tar.

Clark always did that, though. He gummed up the works. He made it impossible for Lex to think clearly.

He ruined him for anyone else, for everyone else.

He made it impossible not to. . .

"Kal?" Lex repeated, drawing back from Clark's face. "Like 'Cher?' Or, God forbid, 'Madonna?'"

Clark smirked -- smirked, for Heaven's sake -- and shook his head. "No," he said. "Like Kal-El. My birth name." He let go of Lex's arms and flung his own wide in nearly the same exact instant. "Surprise, Lex! I'm an alien," he exclaimed, succumbing to laughter shortly following the declaration.

. . . love him.


	9. Eight

Lex's face was priceless, his reaction perfect. His eyebrows drew together and the lines on his forehead deepened. His mouth turned down and scrunched in on itself. He looked both confused and angry. Ah, how he'd missed Lex.

Kal again caught the sound of someone stealthily moving closer to them. "You brought a friend?" he guessed with a grin, as though it were quaint, cute, endearing, not vaguely. . . hurtful.

Lex frowned and turned his head away, breaking the eye contact. He stretched to look over Kal's shoulder where, by the sound of things, said friend had stopped and was now waiting.

Suddenly, Lex's eyes were back on him. "Perhaps I did," he said, that anger finally winning out and taking over his face. His expression turned scornful, challenging, and he stepped away smoothly, almost haughtily. Prince of the City. Lord of His Domain.

Lex thought he was hot fuckin' shit just cos he was rich and powerful. He thought he was better than everyone who had to work to get by, better than the Kents with their ridiculous farm and small town manners, better than the people who pressed his clothes and made his food, better than everyone else in this nightclub, save perhaps his friend Pretty Boy Wayne skulking behind them.

He thought he was better than Clark Kent, small town buffoon and emotional idiot. Thought he was better than Jacqueline Paradis, Kal Jerome, and Lance Izer, who were all nothing but three high class whores.

Well, he could think that all he wanted, but Lex was for damn sure not any better than Kal-El, the last of the House of El, the last son of Krypton. He was the only extra-terrestrial on this planet, one of a kind. No one, anywhere, was better than he.

"Well," Kal said loudly, "maybe you should introduce Mr. Wayne, and let him get up from that crouch. I understand holding a position like that tends to hurt after awhile."

Lex's reaction to this was sadly lacking in comedic effect, not like the one to his previous taunt at all. As Lex waved his arm in a beckoning gesture towards Wayne, Kal came to the personal realization that he said what he did only to provoke some sort of response from those around him. Clark tried to make people understand him. He gave away clues and bits of information in the hopes that someone, anyone, would figure out the truth and help him figure out what to do. Clark did that, like a useless, weak infant. Kal refused to lower himself like that. He showed people how foolish and weak they were, and kept himself to himself.

The other man came up along Lex's left side, stopping just before touching either Lex or Kal. He stared, and Kal couldn't resist grinning at him.

Stretching out his hand towards Wayne, Kal said, "Pleasure to meet you, Bruce," to which, the man barely blinked before taking his hand and shaking it efficiently and neatly. He let go, dropping his own hand back down to his side, but his eyes never changed. They stayed right on Kal's, with the same intensity, the same calculation, the same veiled emotion bubbling underneath the whole time. This one was not going to react, Kal thought, resentfully. Fine, he'd just focus on Lex. It'd be a sort of challenge to see how far he could push him. Kal hadn't felt this good in years.

He thought of Jack and Lance for a second, and quickly glanced back at them. They were still dancing, although Jack's eyes were steadfastly fastened on Kal across the dance floor. Lance, on the other hand, had gyrated his way over to another couple and was currently acting as lunchmeat to two women's slices of bread.

Kal turned back with a chuckle.

"So," Kal said, "should we take this someplace quieter, or we looking to have it out right here? I'm game either way, but two famous playboys might want to avoid a scene, right?"

Lex's lips twitched, but he nodded, reaching out and grabbing Kal's upper arm.

"Come on then," he said. "We'll go back to my place. If your friends won't mind?" And his look said that two could play Kal's game.

"Oh, they won't mind one bit," Kal assured him. He waved back at Jack, and she frowned at him, but stayed put. One good thing about getting up close and personal like the two of them had. . . a few gestures and a look, and they immediately knew what the other was trying to say. No fuss, no muss.

Lex took the lead, and Kal let himself be dragged along behind him. Wayne stayed just behind Kal, the two of them corralling him in like some kind of wild beast. When they reached the curb outside, Bruce walked over to the valet and got them to bring the car around. It was a silver Porsche Boxster, a two-seater. Kal smirked.

"So whose lap am I gonna be riding on?" he asked Lex with a leer. For his part, Lex played it pretty cool. His face remained expressionless, but it was the flush that moved across his face and down into his collar that gave him away.

"No one's," came a deep voice behind them. It was Wayne, and damned if that weren't one of the sexiest voices he'd ever heard. Wayne came to stand on Kal's other side, unashamedly resuming his staring and inner plotting. "I'll take a cab back to my hotel."

"Bruce," Lex suddenly said, his tone sounding almost offended.

"Yeah," Kal added, "don't feel you have to leave on my account." He met those cold, blue eyes dead-on and said, "There's room enough for three. Wouldn't want dear Lex to get hurt by big ol' scary me, would we?"

Wayne smiled then, actually smiled, and Kal, to his chagrin, looked away. The smug bastard said nothing more, but Kal got the message clearly enough. Bruce wasn't the plastic playboy the tabloids made him out to be, not with a dead smile like that and the way he could move where, if he were honest with himself, even Kal had to strain just a little to be able to pick up his passing.

He wouldn't put it past Wayne to have some sort of high-tech gizmo up his sleeve that used Kryptonite, either. Between what Lex must have deduced and his tendency to both charm people pliant and pass along his obsessions, Wayne getting out of the car without some kind of weapon would have been a miracle. If it were anyone but Lex standing beside him right now, Kal would have already been long gone.

He wanted to know, though. He wanted to hear what had happened back in Smallville. He was curious to see if Lex had changed any. . . if Clark's absence had even registered in his life these past few years. It was stupid and risky, and in the end he had no doubt he'd end up feeling worse than if he'd just ignored Lex's presence in that club altogether. He needed to know. Clark needed it, and for once Kal felt the same.

Lex pushed Kal towards the car's passenger side, and Bruce stayed up on the curb, waiting for the valet to successfully hail him a cab. Kal opened his door and wedged himself inside. It was like sitting in an extremely expensive sardine can.

"So, where to?" Kal asked, looking over at Lex buckling his seatbelt. Kal didn't even make a move towards his, of course, and if Lex asked, well. . . he'd just have to remind him why the whole contraption was unnecessary, now wouldn't he?

(On his first legitimate job for Morgan, he was to walk into some sort of hospital and follow the directions he'd been told to memorize. Once he reached the end of the road, Morgan said, he'd find out what was expected of him.

Now he'd never considered himself stupid, but seeing was believing and all that. He could categorically say, looking back, that walking into that lab in the sub-sub-sub-basement of Metropolis General Hospital was the stupidest thing he'd ever done in his entire life.

In his nightmares, he sometimes dreamed of places like that. Experiments and revolutionary theories being tested everywhere he'd looked, and all Kal could think was how very much he'd like to burn the place down. It was the future right before his eyes, and he'd never been so scared as in that moment. By comparison, anything these days was a cakewalk, so he supposed he had Morgan to thank for that at least.

He was expected to return to that lab every week for. . . tests. Blood was forcibly taken. Skin, hair, and nail samples all compiled, dated and run through various machines.

And what did he receive in return for being so terribly, unequivocally stupid?

Nothing, really. It was a downward spiral and he was in full swirl towards Hell -- or wherever it was bad aliens went.

He'd once asked Jack if she'd ever felt things spin out of her control, if she'd just gone along with something even though she knew it was the worst possible thing she could have done at that point in time. She'd looked at him for awhile, then simply nodded and left the room. Afterward, he thought about exactly what he'd said and could have slapped himself. There were so many ways she could have taken that grilling, and he had no doubt he'd struck a nerve.

He had to hand it to her, though. She never brought it up, or threw it back in his face when they fought. Jack wasn't like that. She was so calm that Lance had once drunkenly referred to her as the ice queen. Kal gave him shit for it and eventually he'd taken it back, but the kid'd had a point. Jack never really seemed to get angry, and he could count the number of times she'd appeared anything resembling nervous on one hand and still have fingers left over.

She'd only shouted twice that he could recall, and only then because she'd been in the other room and Lance had had the stereo blasting.

Lance got mad, but it was a quick burning fuse and then. . . nothing. He ran out of energy before he ever really got pissed, and often, to their collective amusement, forgot what he was even mad about in the first place.

So it was only Kal then who could legitimately be said to have a temper. It hadn't always been like that. He'd used to be such an easy-going kid, apart from the baggage of being able to do things no one else really could. He'd laughed more than he'd sulked, though, and smiled back when others smiled politely at him. People had used to say he talked a lot. Too much, Chloe had muttered more than a few times.

Now Morgan repeatedly told him he had to do more than just lie there spacing out. He had to moan and grunt and pant and gasp. He was expected to scream and howl for the hardcore clients, and sweet talk the rare nice john who asked specifically for him and him alone.

In his downtime, he could do pretty much whatever he wanted and still. . .

He never ran, never left it all behind, never truly talked back to Morgan beyond what he knew the man liked. He was a good doll, a perfect tool for whatever task his owner set him. He was a good boy, and maybe that was why he was angry. All. The time. He couldn't change because he was weak, and he was weak because there was no way out, no escape.

No matter how far he ran away, he would still know the truth: that he would never belong anywhere, would never be loved and accepted in the face of just, exactly, what he was.

He was different, totally and completely other. How could he ever expect to have anything with anyone when the people who knew him best didn't want him? Couldn't stand the sight of him?

He hated science fiction books now, when before he'd gobbled them up like candy in the hopes that they'd shed some light on himself. Well, they did in the end, didn't they?

He was the quintessential stranger in a strange land, and he had the feeling that some things. . . would just never make sense to him.

Things changed all the time, but not everything.)


	10. Nine

Driving through Metropolis traffic at night, with an estranged friend riding shotgun was not an experience he ever wanted to repeat. Kal didn't stare too long at Lex, but when he did look over. . .

Well, his mere presence had always been distracting, but combine that with the fact that Lex had seen neither hide nor hair of the kid for more than two years and you had a recipe for reckless driving. He got more middle fingers out windows and car horns bleating at him than he ever had before. And that was with actively trying to stay focused. He didn't dare try to imagine what he'd have been like if it had been a longer separation between the two of them.

Five years, and he probably wouldn't have been able to even form a coherent sentence in Clark's presence.

Wait, he thought. No, Kal's presence. Like Cher. Or Prince.

At least he'd picked something unique and not silly.

"So," Lex eventually said into the silence. He took the next exit off the freeway, the one that would take them straight to the Towers and his penthouse. "Any plans tonight?" Kal gave no response beyond a little Mona Lisa smile, so Lex kept up the chitchat. "Robbing any Forbes 500 companies?" he mouthed, unable to keep it fully to himself.

Kal surprised him by laughing out loud, and Lex had to jerk his head back around to the road in order to avoid rear-ending a Honda Element. Damn big-ass fetish cars were everywhere these days.

"Well, Lex Luthor," Kal simpered. "Have you been following me?" Lex dared to glance over at him and got the full effect of Kal batting his eyelashes at him in mock-adoration.

He looked away again and shifted up into first when the big fetish fest ahead finally got moving. Swerving around it and accelerating past, he was almost able to convince himself that this night wasn't going to end badly.

Almost.

"You make it difficult not to notice the stunts you pull," Lex told him, eyes steadfastly on the street ahead.

"Oh, really," Kal said disbelievingly. He was a little too quick to respond for it to have been casual and there was a definite defensive note in his voice. Lex thought he just might have hit a sore spot.

Good.

"And who was it, I wonder," Kal continued, "who was, just last month, plastered on the cover of Newsweek?" He paused just as Lex slowed down to make the turn into the Towers' parking garage. When they hit the security guard at the entrance to Lex's own private section, Kal leaned over and started making googly eyes and petting Lex's arm. Lex resisted the urge to slap at him when Tony's eyes widened dramatically and it took the guy two tries to hit the button that raised the arm blocking their path.

"Hey, Tony," Lex said placidly, even though he had Clark Kent plastered all over him. "Busy night?"

Tony swallowed, and his face was turning red as they spoke. God, Lex should have just waved and spared them both the embarrassment.

"Um, no," Tony stuttered out. "No, not really busy at all, sir. It being a Tuesday and all. . . "

Lex nodded just as Clark. . . Kal. . . whoever tired of just petting and actually kissed his neck. And then proceeded to repeat the action all along the collar of Lex's shirt.

"Everyone's snug in their beds, ready for work tomorrow. Right." Lex took a deep breath and tried for a smile, but now Tony seemed to be opting for the 'out-of-sight-out-of-mind' method. At least, Lex didn't think the man's own hands could be that interesting. "Well, take it easy, Tony," he bid the poor man.

"Uh, you-- you too, sir," Tony replied, his eyes darting over to Lex's then back down.

Lex went to reach for the gear shift only to instead come in contact with a large warm thigh. He jerked his hand back like it'd been touching fire, and heard Kal chuckle into his neck.

Next thing he knew, Kal was sliding back into his own seat, leaving only an extra-large paw caressing the gear shift in a completely obscene fashion.

"Night, Tony!" Kal called out and, like a moth to the flame, Lex's poor employee turned and looked. He got a pained expression on his beet-red face, but he nodded back. Lex had the feeling his smile had turned decidedly manic as he shoved Clark's hand away and roared through the barrier. He turned into the spot he'd vacated no more than a few hours prior, and turned the car off.

He could feel the kid's smirk without even looking. It was quite the challenge not to reach over and. . .

Well, Lex wasn't quite sure whether he'd rather punch that smirk off or force Clark to follow through on all the promises his body had been making just a moment ago. Probably both.

"Let's go," he ended up gritting out, sliding from the car and just barely managing not to slam the door. Kal got to his feet as gracefully as a dancer, and Lex scowled at the reminder that this wasn't Clark. At. All.

(Making business trips these days meant travelling with an entourage. Lionel had just personally finished up an especially hostile takeover and bad press abounded. There had been threats, anonymous letters turned over to private consultants and then to the police. Lex had been forced to hire bodyguards.

It was either that or risk being shot in the head for another one of his father's great masterstrokes.

So he researched and discreetly inquired, and generally made himself as knowledgeable as he could about the qualifications a good bodyguard should possess in this day and age. Soon the day rolled around when he held "tryouts," and a few obvious candidates stuck out right away.

It was one of the rare occasions in his life when luck actually seemed to be on his side.

Mercy Graves was the seventh person he saw, and the first woman. He liked her from the moment she strode into his office. Anyone who, with each step, looked perfectly capable of bending the ground itself to her will was someone Lex wanted on his side.

And then the tenth hopeful was aptly named Hope. He took it as a good sign, and an even better one was when he found out afterward that Mercy and Hope were in a relationship. They were lovers.

It didn't get much better than that.

Of course, he had no intention of sleeping with either woman. That was understandably out of the question, even if the possibilities of such a scenario did sometimes bring a smile to his lips. Sex complicated interaction, and with the two women working for him, sleeping with either or both would be an incredibly foolish mistake. It was something his father would do, and that was reason enough to ensure Lex never made any overtures in that direction.

This was all under the assumption that Mercy and/or Hope would have wanted in his bed in the first place, which, considering they were in a lesbian relationship, was itself quite the leap in logic. A man had his pride, though, and it didn't hurt to think he was capable of getting that lucky. . . as long as he didn't let himself get too carried away.

The women's rapport with each other while he was outside his penthouse differed greatly from the way they interacted when he was home. Outside, all their attention was on him. All of it. It was a little unsettling, to say the least, not to mention heady too. Two women wholly invested in his each and every move for hours upon hours a day, and he was just supposed to instantly accept that as the norm? Yeah, right.

When they were in the penthouse, with Lex doing his own thing up on the higher level, and the two of them doing whatever they pleased on the lower, Lex was still aware he was being monitored, but it wasn't nearly as focused an attention. At home, it was as if he were the ward or the lately-adopted son. They knew what he was doing, but they left him to it. They trusted he was capable of remaining un-shot within the confines of his own home, and Lex hoped that never changed. If it did, it would mean he'd either become so incompetent he didn't deserve to live, or that he'd become so utterly despised nowhere was safe. And while he was a Luthor, hopefully his fate would not be that of his father. Lionel'd had bodyguards around him for as far back as Lex could remember. Even the man's drivers were trained in hand-to-hand combat, even the cooks.

It would've been funny and sad if it weren't necessary, but Lex was pretty sure such measures were actually called for in his father's case. Paranoia was one thing, but there was the saying 'you aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you.'

Bodyguards, and bulletproof vests and armored cars: the wave of the future.)


	11. Ten

He let Lex take the lead, following him into a private elevator off the just as private garage. There had to be more than 20 vehicles spread out across that oh-so-special concrete. Did they all belong to Lex? Or were some of 'em Daddy's, too?

Kal smirked and once inside, made sure to sprawl more than lean. The interior of the elevator was covered in enough reflective surfaces that it would've been hard for Lex to look anywhere and not see Kal behind him. So Kal put his shoulders flat against the rear of the elevator car and deliberately arched his back up and forward. Watching Lex's reaction to that move proved highly entertaining. He couldn't resist grinning at the widened eyes, the quick in-drawn breath, the open mouth. 

He knew the picture he made. Even if he hadn't been able to see it, he still would've known. Practice makes perfect. Kal had better damn well know what he looked like by now. And he did. He'd perfected this look. They always liked a little display of attitude on the ride up. It's when he got inside the room itself that he had to play meek and mild, but up until then the cliché of the rent boy was always top seller. They ate it up: chicks, guys, freaks, and everyone in between. 

And Lex was no different. He acted like he was, but he stared at Kal just like they all did. Difference was, they all knew Kal was theirs only for as long as the money held out. Lex didn't know. Lex hadn't paid.

Lex wasn't going to pay. That sudden realization coincided with their apparent arrival at Lex's apartment. The elevator doors slid open on a ping; Lex moved forward smoothly and so sure of himself; and Kal abruptly wondered what the fuck he was going to tell Morgan about all this. 

But he moved out of the car smoothly, too. He kept the fact that he was actually a little worried at the moment well off his face and away from his eyes. He followed Lex into his penthouse fuck pad, with all its luxury and high class taste and never batted an eyelash. There were two levels to the apartment, and a stereo of some kind was blaring music nearby. Kal pinned the sound to the first floor, but the acoustics of the place made it hard to get anything close to a more accurate assessment. . . if he wanted to keep his face impassive and the ring on his finger, that was. Sure, sacrificing one or both of those would make it beyond easy to pinpoint the few exact millimeters from whence more of that techno crap spewed forth, but that wasn't even really an option. Lex was trying to play it cool, and Kal would do no less. He'd do better, in fact. Had done better so far, he thought. 

Lex had been shocked in the club and embarrassed out by the guard. He'd also been turned on from practically the get-go. Even better, he'd shown all those things, not only on his face, but also in his body language. Lex was losing.

Kal would be the winner this time. He was in the apartment, inside and he wasn't going to back down. No meek and mild this time. Lex wasn't paying. He wasn't paying for that, and so Kal didn't have to playact. 

"Home sweet home," Lex suddenly said, moving quickly over to the huge wet bar and rustling about in making himself a drink. Kal took the time to wander around the room, eventually winding up standing in front of the enormous bank of westward facing windows. The sixty-sixth floor didn't really seem all that high up anymore, but the view was still amazing. 

The city glittered. It shone outside these windows. Kal briefly entertained the idea of rushing past them, breaking the glass and pushing through the air and. . . would he shoot across to the building on the other side? Or would he fall downward? 

It didn't really matter either way, after all.

"Enjoying the view?" Lex called out. He was still over at the bar, and had made no move to come any closer. Just as well. "I imagine it pales considerably against some of the others you've. . . seen."

"You imagine wrong then," Kal replied. He kept the volume of his voice low, wanting Lex to have to strain to hear it. "It's a beautiful sight." He turned away then and looked back at Lex. "Do you enjoy it, Lex? Or just rush by it every day on your way to work?"

Lex was openly frowning now so Kal smirked back. He was just about to take a step forward when his ears picked up on the slight rustling sound of someone moving stealthily down the hallway. Lex had bodyguards these days, Kal thought, amused despite himself. 

How cute. 

"Is it one or two?" Kal asked the room at large. He glanced at Lex, who was, no surprise, still frowning, but let his eyes slide right past him and back to the wall behind him. Kal warred with himself over whether to look closer or not, but decided against it in the end. It was the same argument he'd had just a moment before, and he made the same decision now as he had then. He wouldn't show Lex what he was or wasn't feeling. He wouldn't give him that advantage, that satisfaction, and if that also meant Kal was unable to show off. . . well, then he was willing to make that sacrifice. Besides, less was more, and all that. 

"Pardon?" Lex asked loudly. 

Kal just went right on smirking. He turned back to look at Lex, though, make eye contact with him and play a little more.

"The guards coming up in either hallway?" Kal clarified and, despite what looked to be his best effort, Lex's face paled noticeably and his eyes narrowed in reaction. Kal tilted his head for show, and then raised his eyebrows in amusement. "It is two, right? One there," he said, pointing to his own left, "and the other inching around the wall behind you." He gestured with his hand in that direction, as well. Then Kal went about moving over to the nearby sofa like he'd originally intended prior to having caught on to the guards' movement. 

Lex's face regained its color in a hurry, and Kal just studied him across the way. Lex brought his drink up to his mouth, taking a healthy-sized swallow and then slamming the glass back down onto the countertop.

"Okay," he called out, looking at Kal, but not talking to him, "quit the skulking and get out here already! Enough with the games." Lex's eyebrows then jerked up and he made a quick, abrupt shrug with his shoulders. 'Happy now?' his body was asking.

Kal's smirk never wavered. He shifted on the sofa, bringing his arm up to drape across the back and crossing his right leg over his left, ankle on knee. Lex was still scowling, when two--

Two women came strutting out of either hiding place, one white and blonde, the other black with long dreadlocks. Kal gave a low appreciative whistle, watching the women closely as they moved to just the right places. The blonde had been nearest Kal, so she took up a more offensive stance against him. The one with the dreadlocks, on the other hand, having been working her way up the wall just behind Lex and his bar, was the obvious choice for the more defensive role. She moved right in front of Lex, blocking him from view as her blonde counterpart simultaneously finished shifting fully in front of Kal. 

Perfect.

"Well, goddamn, Lex," Kal said, chortling a little. "Looks like you finally managed to find not one, but two women not trying to kill you! Congratulations!" He stared up at the blonde Valkyrie now towering above him, met her cold stare and smirked right back up at her. "Did they come as a set? Perhaps a discount price? Buy one, get one free?" Blondie's lips twitched at that, and Kal grinned, showing his canines.

He knew bodyguards. These women were good, but he seriously doubted they'd be able to stop him were he serious about getting to Lex. They were human. 

They were therefore weaker.

"Oh, for crying out loud," Lex could be heard to mutter. "Hope, Mercy, back the fuck off, all right?" Neither woman moved, and Kal chuckled a little. "I'm serious," Lex then said, voice as cold as winter ice. One more second passed, but then as one both women moved away. Lex's shifted down the bar about a foot, and Kal's wall moved over to the left, probably trying to subtly work her way behind him to set up for a possible sneak attack later. 

Yeah, good luck with that, Lady, he thought. 

Lex was still glowering, which Kal thought was hilarious, actually. "So, this is fun, and all," he said, "but was there some reason in particular that you brought me here? Or didya just want to show off your new toys?"

That did it. Lex went from pissed off to nuclear in one second flat.

"I brought you back here, Clark, because after more than two years spent looking for you I wasn't about to just let you disappear again."

"Liar." 

Lex's face didn't react, but his body flinched a little. Kal was starting to feel a little on-edge, and whether that was because of the situation itself or due to something else starting to crop up again that he so did not need right now. . . well, that remained to be seen. So if getting to the fucking heart of the problem suddenly became his one and only goal, then that was just the way it was. He could be blunt. And feeling like he had to divide his attention between Lex and Lex's bodyguards wasn't helping anything. 

Fucking bodyguards. Kal started to put a hand up to his chest, then abruptly realized what he was doing and dropped it back down to the armrest. 

Goddamn it. Fuck. 

Lex had, in the meantime, moved out from behind the bar and was currently staring at Kal from only a few feet away. 

"Something wrong?" Lex asked. Kal expected his voice to be cold, but it wasn't.

Too bad. He'd prefer cold to whatever else was going on in that head. Something weird and superior, no doubt. Lex always tried to play the good guy, but he was no. . . good at it. He was like Kal; in the end, blood will out.

Monsters, aren't we all.

"I'm peachy," Kal snapped, then immediately had to suppress a wince at his tone. He hadn't meant to come off sounding so defensive. Damn it, now Lex really wouldn't back off and get to the point. Kal had just handed him something to pick at, and Lex never had been able to resist a puzzle.

"You sure? Cos you're looking a little pale there." Lex moved closer, effortlessly navigating his way around all the knick-knacks and decorative shit in between him and one of the nearby armchairs. He even exchanged a pointed look with the bodyguard behind Kal on his way over, a look which immediately preceded said bodyguard's relocation to a point once again within Kal's immediate line of sight. Good. He didn't like having anyone at his back without his permission. 

But damned if he were going to thank Lex for that, no matter what the raised eyebrows now across from him seemed to demand.

"It's just your lighting in here," Kal said, breaking the eye contact with Lex. "Makes everyone look like a cadaver."

"Or it just shows things as they truly are instead of hiding their flaws in decorative shadow," Lex replied easily. From the corner of his eye, Kal could see Lex shift and settle back into his chair. The two bodyguards were still in the room, but clear on the other side of it. It was deliberate. This was Lex playing games again and making statements without saying anything. 

'I'm harmless if you don't fuck with me,' he was saying right now. So he had Kal's number, all right. He knew what was what, knew Kal could hurt him before either of those fancy bodyguards even blinked. This was Lex trusting him. This was Lex playing the good guy again, the understanding friend. Kal expected sometime within the next few minutes, he'd get the if-you-need-some-help-all-you-have-to-do-is-ask spiel. Predictable, and just as meaningless and fake as everyone and everything.

"Get to the point, Lex."

"I wasn't aware there was a point here, Clark," Lex replied cheerily. "Weren't you the one who suggested we adjourn to somewhere. . . more private? I can't help now but think you're looking a mite ill? Do you need to lie down? I have a guestroom upstairs, if that's the issue." And then he smiled, kindly, like it was all a joke and Kal was being silly and stupid. 

"Fine," he gritted out. He then had to suddenly bite his lip to keep from reacting to the start of the throb and pulse from his chest. "I'll just let myself out then, and we'll. . . chalk all this up to a rash decision on my part." He got to his feet, rapidly becoming too dazed and desperate to care about stumbling or anything at all besides getting into that elevator right this second.

"Clark," Lex called out. "Kal. Stop. Where are you going?" 

He was over against the wall, the button for the elevator only a lift of his arm away and he. . . could barely suck it up long enough to manage even that much. Shit, he thought on repeat. Shit, shit, shit. 

He was fucking trapped up here. Stupid. It'd been a week since he'd last taken the ring off. 'Course it'd be right now that the thing would-- would-- fuck up.

Fuck up. Shit. Once Kal's finger made contact with the button for the elevator, he jabbed it repeatedly, desperately. He kept pushing until he couldn't anymore because he'd be damned if he ended up collapsing here, of all places. 

"Breathe, Clark," Lex whispered close by. "Just breathe, okay? You'll be all right. Mercy!" he shouted, his voice bouncing around the room. "Get over here and help me!" Lex's hands were touching Kal's shoulders, his arms.

It was unbearable.

". . . get the. . . fuck off me," Kal breathed out. He fell forward. The elevator. The doors had opened, and Kal fell inside. But the fire followed him. It was inside him and all over. The ring was a direct line to his chest, a red hot poker and with every breath he managed to drag inside, waves of fire shot up his arm and directly into the scar. 

"Just breathe," Lex repeated. 

It was too much, and suddenly he couldn't care about anything except making the fire die. Kal brought his hands together as quickly as he could, which felt like hours, years. Then he had to try and pry the ring off. 

It was stuck.

His whole body burned, and he couldn't see, couldn't feel around the pain. He couldn't feel his fingers gripping the ring and he couldn't see them. Was he even moving anymore? Was he breathing?

". . . Clar-- !"

Off, Kal thought. He thought of each individual letter. O-F-F

Fire, he thought. Suddenly he was moving, but not. It felt like falling, and he was burning. Red, fire, ring, scar, ring, off, off, off, wet, too slippery. . . 

Breathe, breathe, breathe. . . 

And then he tried to drag in more air. . . and could do it. He sucked in lungful after lungful of beautiful air. No more pain. No more fire.

Bliss, it was pure bliss for five seconds.

But then the world came crashing back in, and Clark knew the truth once more.

And, worse, now Lex did, too. 

(It was always one of the first things out of their mouths, every time.

'Nice scar,' they'd say, or some variation thereof. Then there'd be the follow-up, something along the lines of, 'How'd you get it?' or 'You into that kind of stuff then?' 

Then they'd want to touch it, feel it, add their own. Kal put up with it because they liked it. If they liked it, then they paid more. If they paid more, Morgan was happier.

It was always best to try and make Morgan happier. Never happy, not really, not that Kal had ever truly seen, but happier was certainly attainable. Content, maybe. Satisfied. Those, he'd definitely seen, made happen, been the cause of. 

Kal satisfied Morgan, and as far as he knew or could tell, he was the only "person" to do so these days. Used to be, quite a few folks were brought up to that green bed, but not anymore. More often than not, Kal was there instead of in "his apartment" at the complex. He had clothes up there in Morgan's suite. He had bathroom crap in Morgan's shower, and there was food in the kitchen's fridge that no one but Kal ever ate. No one else's stuff was up there, either, no one's besides his and Morgan's.

He made Morgan happier and, sure, he had to work at it, for it, but it was worth it. It was worth it to be up there. Kal knew things, important things. He got better jobs and more leeway. His leash was longer. He wouldn't go back to how it was, either, scraping by in alleys and trying to avoid being seen by cops. Not that it would really matter now anyway, considering that according to those fake-ass records he was over 18, but it was the. . . principle of the thing. He'd worked hard to get up there. He'd used everything to get into that suite, and he wasn't going to give it up without a fight, and not even then unless something really fucking better came along.

He'd come this far, and those green sheets were his due. They were his, and no one else was getting them. No one, "working-class" or otherwise. Kal took care of Morgan, and he got the perks for doing so. No cops, no questions, and no goddamn cat fights over clientele. Kal got what he wanted, which wasn't all that much considering what he put out, and Morgan got what he wanted. And that was it. The Deal. Mutually beneficial business relationship. Everyone went away happy.

Everyone stayed happy. Or, well, happier.)


	12. Eleven

(He'd had his first up close and personal experience with drug overdose shortly after his 15th birthday. At some relative stranger's condo -- because everyone was relatively a stranger, some just more relative than others -- Lex stuck out an arm and someone obliged by filling it with heroin for the first time. He could remember liking that. He must have, quite a bit, because the next memory is of several hands gripping him tight and nothing but wind and cold surrounding him. Back then, Lex had thought the air to be holding him up, when in truth it'd been the thing trying to pull him down. He'd gotten so high that night he'd thrown himself off a 45th storey balcony and only the hands of three equally high people had saved him from going splat all over the sidewalk below. 

He'd always healed up quickly, though, so two days later when Monday rolled around. . . Lex had been as good as new again, albeit thereafter with a decided taste for the harder stuff. Heroin would always and forever be his drug of choice. He'd OD'd on the stuff a grand total of three times, and knew without a doubt were he to ever shoot up again. . . it'd be one of the last things he ever would do in life. He wasn't a man of half measures, anymore than he was the type to settle for second best, and if he set out to do something, then he damn well did it right and did it better than anyone else ever had or ever would.

He wanted to get it right the first time. He hated waiting, had no. . . patience for it. It was a matter of pride. Big shocker, there. He'd only had that hammered into him since birth, after all: 'Luthors are the Best. Anything less is unacceptable, Lex.' Truth be told, he rather thought his father the kind to have even whispered something along those lines to his wife's stomach while Lex was in utero. He wouldn't have put it past him. 

So until the day rolled around that Lex Luthor decided to check out of the Mortal Coil Hotel once and for all, he upheld the pact he'd once made with himself to indulge in only the hooch and maybe an occasional joint here and there. That was it, though. Anything else and he'd be right back in that condo, the embodiment of every rich-kid stereotype known to man. Anything harder, and even Lex Luthor would run the risk of permanently frying his brain and becoming just another stain people stepped around. . . and everyone knew what a hard to kill son-of-a-bitch he was. Bullets? Nope. Knives? Forgetta 'bout it. 

Lex Luthor was the Prince of Metropolis. He was invincible, top dog.

And he'd be damned if he'd give up any of that for some paltry sense of inner peace and the feeling of being held up for once instead of always being pulled, dragged, and beaten down. 

Yeah, cos who would ever want anything like that when they were a Luthor?)

Kal went face-down in the elevator, and Lex didn't even think to halt the damn thing until after the doors had closed. 

With him in it. And Kal. Mercy would have a few choice words for him once this was all over, but honestly Lex didn't give a rat's ass. Clar-- Kal was writhing on the floor, his hands tearing at each other and probably the most horrifying look of pain on his face that Lex had ever seen on anybody in his whole life.

So, yeah, if Mercy wasn't quick enough to get over here, then she'd better shut her yap, too, cos evidently Lex wasn't the only one who'd dropped the ball tonight. 

". . . off," Kal was chanting. "Off, off. . . fire. . . off. . . "

"Jesus, what the Hell?" Lex muttered rhetorically. Kal was clawing desperately at his own hands, and Lex wanted to do something to help, but getting in the middle of what seemed like one mother of a come-down wasn't exactly the best course of action.

When had Clark become a junkie?

" . . . off," Kal pleaded again. God, those were tears rolling down his face. 

"Fine," Lex said, forcibly dampening his anger and reaching out to grab Kal's wrists. He tried to pull his hands apart, but couldn't move either one, not an inch, not even a millimeter. "Clark, Clark," Lex called to him in his gentlest, calmest of voices, "what do you need 'off?' What's going on?"

The elevator was heading down to the garage. Had Lex hit the button? Or Kal? This was like something out of a nightmare.

Suddenly it was stifling in the small elevator. It was hot, very hot. Lex could actually feel the heat. He could feel it coming off Kal in waves. It was coming from him. The wrists Lex held were scorching.

"Kal!" Lex shouted, directly into his ear. What the Hell was going o-- "Kal! Clark! What do you need off?!" he repeated. "What's going on?"

They were nearing the bottom of the complex. Soon the elevator would stop and the doors would open on the garage. Kal's body was jerking spasmodically now, almost like a seizure, and still his hands kept at each other. Lex felt his grip on Kal's wrist slip, and when he looked down he realized it was because of the blood. Kal was scratching himself bloody, and his body was hotter than humanly possible. Another pronounced jerk, and Lex's eyes caught the flash of something in all that mess of red. 

He looked closer, moving his head and going with the movement of Kal's body. It was a ring, and with abrupt certainty, Lex knew that was what Kal was frantically trying to get 'off.'

So Lex took Kal's finger and managed to hold it still with one hand long enough to slide the ring off it with his other hand.

The result was instantaneous, like a switch being thrown. Kal stopped moving, and his body temperature dropped what had to be 20 degrees in less than a second. Lex carefully let go of Kal's hands, gently laying them down on top of Kal's stomach. He started to lift the offending ring up to get a better look at it, but was stopped short at the sight below him.

Kal opened his eyes and his mouth widely, drawing in huge amounts of air with the latter and staring right up at Lex with the former. And, oddly enough, it wasn't fear or humiliation or pain he saw on Kal's face anymore. No, it was the opposite, in fact. Lex looked down into those eyes and saw. . . happiness, innocence, goodness and peace.

He saw Clark. 

It didn't last long, though. A second more, maybe two, and those eyes were squeezed shut. The gasping for breath was for a different reason, and the tears were suddenly back in full force. Lex slipped the ring into his pocket, and quickly took up one of Clark's hands. Once again, the body beneath him shook, but it wasn't because of any drug withdrawal this time.

Clark was crying, sobbing. He wrenched his hand from Lex's hold and turned on his side away from him, curling himself into a ball just as the elevator set down in the garage. The doors pinged open to the accompaniment of despair.

"Oh, Clark," Lex breathed out, himself suddenly having a hard time seeing. He blinked rapidly a few times, and placed his hand on Clark's shoulder once more. 

What did you say to a person who'd just hit rock bottom right in front of you? At least, Lex hoped this was rock bottom for Clark, and not just another step on the way down. 

He'd hate to think it could get worse than this.

With the elevator doors open to the garage, the smells and sounds of cars close by filtered in. Clark's shoulder shaking under his hand and the heartbreaking sound of him crying his guts out in stereo warred with honking, shouting, sirens, and the overpowering smell of gasoline. Lex wasn't even surprised when he felt wetness roll down his own face. He simply shifted to sit cross-legged next to his. . . best friend, and gave into a few tears of his own. The elevator doors eventually closed again and Clark's sobbing quieted after awhile, but Lex didn't move. 

"Clark," he started. . . but then fell short. Where did he even begin?

"Lex," Clark whispered back to him. 

Lex squeezed Clark's shoulder, and reached up to swipe at his own still-damp eyes. "I don't know about you," he offered quietly, hand still gripping Clark tight, "but I could go for a drink right about now."

There was two seconds of silence perhaps and then Clark dragged in a deep breath. When he released it, a quiet "Yeah" floated out, too. 

It wasn't much, but it. . . it was a start. Lex reached up and pushed the button, and once more the elevator started to ascend. 

And the only direction they could go was up.


End file.
